miracles don't care who you are
like don't forget
measles whooping
cough
mumps chickenpox yes
we had them all
plus i have to add in for me
personally diph
theria which got us
quarantined
signs posted all around warning normal
people i was conta
gious nailed on the door
by the public health nurse while
the doctor stuck me
with this enormous needle
and i can still hear
mama asking will he die is this how
he ends and he hardly got started
but i came through of course
just like buck puckett's sister with her polio
stuck away in a iron lung till we about
forgot all about her
but next thing we knew there she was in the back
of buck's pickup helping him
deliver the charlotte observer in
the early morning dark
with nobody around but the milk man and the ice man
who she would wave at curled up
like a pretzel surrounded by the news of the world in stacks
taller than she was and then poof
one day she was gone and everybody thought
she had a relapse
and died but buck said no nobody would have guessed it
but his little sister
had got married and moved to
the skunk works they called it
where her husband worked on the you too
a plane that flew
higher than ninety angels
which buck's sister's husband said is about as close
to heaven as it gets
